Haizaki has been battling over this letter for a while now, and he’s still not sure how to make the words come out as they should.
What he wants to say, on this shabby scrap of paper he stole from his cellmate, is how much you mean to him. There’s no one like you - and he’s not just parroting a line from one of those trash rom-coms you used to make him watch. You’re someone special, someone he never felt he deserved. You’ve put up with him all this time, despite the trouble he’s caused you, despite all your family’s complaints (fair complaints too), despite all the reasons you should have never looked a second time at a guy like him. Fucking hell, Haizaki needs you. It’s not a puppy love anymore, gone are the days of just looking for a good fuck; he loves you as the grass loves the dew which makes it glow in the moonlight, and he’s going to do everything it takes to make it back to you.
That’s what he wants to say, at least.
But he can’t. The pencil feels awkward in his hand, and the eraser’s been used so often that it has worn a hole into the monotone lines. Really, Haizaki doesn’t want to be all soppy and disgusting in front of you. What good would that bring? It's as his brother taught him, no one wants to date someone who acts as if they care.
“If you’re ever gonna find more than a fuck-buddy,” his brother had laughed once, in between chugging shots of the foul-smelling bottle beside him, “you gotta be the bad guy. That’s what they like: hard to get, and all that shit.”
Haizaki had been thirteen at the time; his brother’s words had been law.
And he’s still sure there’s truth in that advice. In the end, there’s no good reason for you - so flawless in practically everything - to be with a degenerate piece of shit like him, rotting away in prison as he was destined too. Quiet, yet tortuously loud, there’s a voice in Haizaki’s head that whispers this will not the be last time too. This cell will become an old friend. Just like the rest of the men in the prison, Haizaki will learn to find a home in the cold metal bars and the cold glares of the guards on the other side and the cold air of the little window just too tall for Haizaki to look out of. (He hasn’t seen the pure *blue* of a spring sky in a while.) You shall fade away - a beautiful memory, a dream of sweet summers of youth but nothing more.
Haizaki fucking misses you.
When they took him away, he promised that he’d write. Sure, his handwriting sucks (and his spelling leaves something to be desired), but you had smiled so widely at his words - despite the tears shimmering beneath your eyes - that Haizaki had decided immediately he could not not write. Then, there were all those little fears which encouraged this hopeless ideal, murmuring that, if you didn’t receive a message from him, he'd be bound to lose you. He’d be forgotten, lost to the system. Yet, somehow, he hasn’t written, and he probably won’t today once more. What’s the point? He wouldn’t be surprised if you have forgotten him by now anyway. Some clumsily-written lines on how shit prison is, and how he can’t wait to get out, wouldn't have changed that.
A guard disturbs him from this chain of thought — the handcuff swings from his fingertips, an old friend.
“Haizaki Shougo, you’ve got a visitor.”
Haizaki doesn’t dare think what his heart is instantaneously chanting in hope. For all his luck, it’s his brother - surprisingly the bastard's managed to evade jail this long - come to tease dumb little Shougo for having gotten caught by the cops. Or maybe his mother has finally abandoned her disapproval of him, (all her hatred of what he did to the family name), and is standing by the visitor’s hall, picking at the skin around her nails.
Slowly, Haizaki lifts himself from his bench. The bit of paper is shredded, tossed, crumpled, into his pocket. And he walks behind the guards in the same lazy fashion, with his hands forced behind his back - the metal of the cuffs scalding against his skin. What a pathetic sight, he thinks, his head down - watching the little cracks in the floor, filled with some sterilising agent whose sharp odor burns the inside of Haizaki's nose.
But standing there in the hall isn’t a brother or a parent or an old friend. It’s you. You’re stunning, even in the harsh brightness of the prison lighting, just as striking as you were in that moment when he first decided he held something strongly like love towards you. You’re wearing one of his old hoodies too and, when you rush forward to come to hug him, you smell like home and a promise of better things to come.
“Hello, stranger,” you smile.
Haizaki has never felt his heart burn more.
He didn't realise how painful happiness could be.
